The Church of England paved the way on Thursday for a final vote on women bishops to go ahead in July, but supporters angry at last-minute concessions to traditionalists who favour an all-male clergy immediately threatened to scupper it.
After more than a decade of bitter wrangling, traditionalists and liberals appeared no closer to finding a workable blueprint this week with the opposing sides predicting future chaos or departures from the Anglican mother church.
Read it all and there are a lot of other stories there as well.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just continue the Flying Bishops scheme. Most Anglo-catholics I know in the C of E were perfectly willing to continue with that, if under duress. Let sleeping dogs lie.
[blockquote] For the life of me, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just continue the Flying Bishops scheme.[/blockquote]
Because the pretend bishops couldn’t stand the idea of some people not playing along.
Archbishops’ clarification – if that is not an oxymoron.
[blockquote] “Other Anglican provinces already have women bishops, including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” [/blockquote]
A very few. And none of those provinces are doing well in terms of growth, or even maintaining their current numbers and funds.